


The Father

by ArthurianScribe



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bad Parent Jack Drake, Bad Parents Jack and Janet Drake, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Character Study, Dana Winters means well, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Gen, Grooming, I'm Bad At Titles, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Neglect, Jack & Janet Drake's A+ Parenting, Jack Drake-centric, No Plot/Plotless, No beta we die like mne, Tim Drake Deserves Better, Tim Drake is Robin, Unreliable Narrator, but not really, everyone but jack is really just mentioned, no beta we die like robins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25383631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArthurianScribe/pseuds/ArthurianScribe
Summary: Jack Drake tried to be a good Dad, and this is the thanks he gets?Or, Jack Drake tries to figure out what's been going on with Tim, and he doesn't like what he finds.Published for Tim's birthday.
Relationships: Jack Drake & Janet Drake, Jack Drake & Tim Drake, Jack Drake/Dana Winters, Jack Drake/Janet Drake, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dana Winters, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 178





	The Father

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never read any of the comics but I’ve been absolutely enthralled by all of the fanon surrounding the Batfamily lately. As such, I honestly don’t know how true this is to actual canon but its fanfiction. This story is a sort of character study of Jack Drake, focused on his feelings about Tim and his alter ego.

Something was wrong with Tim, and Jack was getting real sick of it.

He’d been such a good kid, back when Janet had… had been around. Always so polite. Always so helpful. He had done so well in school. He’d been so excited to see Jack every time he walked through the door. He’d looked at him like he hung the moon.

Tim didn’t look at him like that anymore. Hell, his son hardly even looked at him at all these days. And when they talked it was always “Bruce Wayne this” and “Dick Grayson that.” Long gone were the days when Tim wanted to talk to Jack about school or the places Jack had visited and studied. 

Jack shouldn’t have to be wishing for the days when his son was small, when they had been gone so often. His teenage years were supposed to be when Jack got to be involved in shaping the man his son grew up to be. They were supposed to be filling out college applications together and Tim would come to Jack with his questions about girls and Jack would cheer his son on at all his athletic events. They were supposed to be doing better. Wasn’t that the whole point of their second chance? Hadn’t Tim been looking forward to this as much as he had? Didn’t Tim know how lucky they were?

He had at one point, of that Jack was sure.

But, at some point, things had changed. At some point, instead of being excited to spend time with his father, Tim had begun to dread it. The bright faces when he walked into the room had been traded for hastily made excuses to leave or quickly ended phone conversations. 

Rather than talking his ear off about what he and Ives had done last weekend, the only time Jack ever heard about his son’s friends these days was when Tim was trying to make an excuse for why he had to miss Jack’s most recent attempt at family bonding. It was all “Sorry, I was late. Bart and I lost track of time playing video games at his place” or “Sorry, I can’t tomorrow night. I already promised Connor I’d help him babysit his little brother.” Tim was always sorry these days. And something was always more important than spending time with his family. He would have thought that after losing his mother Tim would have had his priorities a little straighter, especially with everything they had sacrificed for him.

He wasn’t sure where Tim had gotten such a skewed sense of loyalties but he was pretty sure that Brucie was responsible. Who else would have taught his kid to value nobodies Jack hadn’t even been allowed to meet over his own father. Who else could have taught Tim to disguise his selfishness as selflessness. 

And if that wasn’t bad enough. If that wasn’t enough, his grades had been steadily slipping for months. He’d been getting calls from the school about skipped classes, and now he was lying about football tryouts of all things.

Jack was done just watching his kid fall apart. Playing nice obviously wasn’t working, and no matter how many times Dana implored him to talk to him, to get him help, Jack knew it wasn’t that simple. Tim obviously didn’t mind lying to Jack, so he couldn’t trust him to be honest about what was going on. It was time to take matters into his own hands. 

He hadn’t ever seen Dana as angry as she’d been when she realized what he was doing to Tim’s room, going on about how it was his space and that he was ruining his son’s sense of security. It didn’t matter. If Dana had kids of her own she would understand that he was doing this for Tim’s security. His kid could be addicted to drugs or running guns for one of Gotham’s gangs for all Jack knew. Dana would get over it.

This was about Tim. It was. He was just doing what was best for his son. What else was a dad to do?

But no matter how ready he thought he was to find out the truth, nothing could have prepared him to find the Robin belt in his son’s closet.

It didn’t process right away. How could it? His child had been running around the city behind his back. How long had this been going on? Months? Years? Since the accident? Since before? Jack didn’t know and that was terrifying. How could this be happening to him? Jack was a good man. He attended charity galas. He paid his taxes, well he paid most of his taxes but who didn’t have a nest egg in the Cayman’s these days?

He just didn’t understand how his brilliant son could have done something so positively stupid. Jack and Janet had given Tim everything. A good home. A good education. The best nannies money could buy. And this is how he repaid him? Running around with a freak in a Halloween costume.

Hadn’t Tim thought about what could happen? If he died, if he were hurt or unmasked, had he even thought about what would happen to Jack and Dana? Not only would their reputations be ruined but he was sure CPP would be interested in finding out how Tim’s father could have missed his son picking up such a dangerous hobby.

Wait. How had he picked it up? How had that freak found his son? Jack would be the first to admit that he apparently didn’t know his son as well as he thought, but he did know that Tim wasn’t as stupid as this belt implied. And he’d been raised right. He knew better than to just trust a stranger. And to convince Drake to go running on rooftops would surely have been a tough sell. It would have taken a lot to change his boy so completely, but Jack was from Gotham. He knew what grooming was. It was the only thing that made sense. But even still, that would have taken a lot of time and significant access to a relatively sheltered kid. Frankly, the only man he could think of who would have had the opportunity was-

“Son of a bitch…” he whispered. It made perfect sense. No wonder Tim couldn’t stop singing Wayne’s praises. They’d obviously brainwashed his perfect son into the perfect soldier, and Jack wasn’t going to stand for it. That rich, entitled man-child might think he could get away with stealing Jack’s son, but he had another thing coming. Jack was going to grab his gun, and then he was going to teach the goddamn batman what happened when you messed with a Drake. Tim was going to learn where his loyalties should belong. Jack Drake was going to save his son from himself before it was too late. 

Tim Drake was never going to put that fucking costume on ever again. One day he’d thank him for it, but until then… well, tough love had never hurt anybody.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write Jack as a sort of unreliable narrator and am not in anyway trying to portray this behavior as good parenting. The way I see him, I think Jack genuinely thinks he is a good parent but misses the mark due to a combination of being self-centered and by being completely oblivious to his son really his. Jack sees what he wants to see with Tim, not realizing that he plays to expectations. He wants to be a good dad but that has more to with him than his son.


End file.
